


The Road Goes Ever On and On

by Ancalimë (Cymbidia)



Category: The Lord of the Rings - J. R. R. Tolkien, The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Eregion, Gen, Missing Scene, Roads and Ruins, pre-Council of Elrond
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-13
Updated: 2019-05-13
Packaged: 2020-03-02 16:41:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,479
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18814885
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cymbidia/pseuds/Ancalim%C3%AB
Summary: Boromir loses his horse whilst fording the Greyflood at Tharbad, so he decides to take a shortcut through Eregion, on his way to where he hopes Imladris will be. The kingdom of Eregion is broken and empty, yes, but the memory of the Elves still linger in the things they have left behind.





	The Road Goes Ever On and On

**Author's Note:**

> HI so its been LIKE TWO MONTHS but here's a mega late B2MEM bingo fill! For the prompts:Roads, Eregion, Ruling Stewards

 

The whole ordeal of fording the Greyflood had been a disaster, of course, and Boromir regretted the loss of his horse and part of his supplies. He also regretted choosing Tharbad to cross at. That had been the logical place, and going off road would have cost him dearly, but it unsettled him more to be alone in Hollin than it did to be stranded in the wilderness without a horse.

There was something deeply unnerving about the overgrown roads that lead into the heart of Eregion. No Man or Elf lived within the bounds of the former kingdom, and so far as Boromir knew, no orcs or Fell creatures made their nest here either. Only beasts and birds, passing uncaringly amidst the ruins of civilisation.

Sitting by a paltry fire, wringing the last of the dampness out of his boots, Boromir’s thoughts returned to the maps he had memorised. They had shown no road north of Dunland and south of the Bruinen. There was nothing to it, but to cut across the country, and perhaps to seek for a village somewhere in the scattered remnants of Cardolan or Rhudaur. If he failed find Imladris before the weather turned, he would have to begin making for Bree, which seemed to be the last bastion of Men before the knowledge of Gondor faltered and geographies turned into fairy tales of Halflings and magical forests. Not that Boromir would say no to supping with a Halfling right now. He was prodigiously hungry.

The three undersized fish he had speared earlier sizzled sadly across the sputtering fire, and Boromir seasoned them with a sprinkling of his dwindling supply of salt. The campsite was safe enough for the evening, but tomorrow he would have to begin a trek through the wild ruins of an Elf Kingdom while smelling like wet boots. That was sure to be pleasant.

* * *

The next morning dawned without mercy. Boromir snapped out of his watchful doze and broke camp, then set off along what might have been a major road, some thousand years ago. The way was largely a beaten dirt track, used by animals and the occasional traveller, but cracked and dusty shards of pale paving stones remained here and there, a reminder of the once much wider and much grander highway.

The road began to open up as Boromir trekked north and east. Broken stumps of signposts could be seen at the first junction, and after a brief search Boromir even found the markers, smashed to bits. Large chunks of paving began to appear, then whole bricks, flat and perfectly square and impossibly delicate for a road that had to have been made for horses and carriages and all manner of heavy burdens. The whole bricks had not been as heavily eroded as the shattered fragments. There was something about the way they remained embedded in their place, still perfectly aligned, that made Boromir’s hair stand on end.

“Witchcraft, no doubt,” Boromir muttered to himself. He had much more tolerance for Elven magics when they were not haunting a long dead country. He fervently hoped he’d taken the correct road at the junction.

The road was beginning to be easier to walk on now, fewer meandering branches and opportunistic weeds poking through. Replacing the greenery were corroded bits of what might once have been orcish armour or weapons, and the pattern of tiles became more uniform, broken only by the last lingering tracks of some gargantuan machine long since crumbled. There were not many artifacts of the enemy left -- time had turned them to rust and to dust -- but their hollow imprint remained in the Elvish things that lasted. A sword here and there, looking blunt and weathered but still impossibly whole. Helmets that had since been filled with dust, serving as vessels to flowers and grasses. The increasingly intact road itself, a wide and pristine length of perfectly aligned paving bricks interrupted by two dusty trenches where the surface had been broken. The Elvish things did not seem to weather and erode as quickly, especially not if they had been left whole.

Boromir tread lightly upon the pale stones, eyeing them distrustfully. There was a very slight layer of dust over everything, but otherwise the road was much too pristine. He would leave the road, but it ran straight and true along the Loudwater, following his intended course.

Birds sometimes flew overhead, and Boromir glimpsed a fox, a few rabbits, and, very briefly, some kind of wildcat. The land was otherwise all too silent. The faint breeze did not dare disturb the road dust, swaying through the low bushes with only occasional rustling. The birds called to each other, but they did not sing. The sun was bright overhead felt cool and distant. His footsteps were impossibly loud, and the occasional clank of his bow against his scabbard felt like he was giving away his position to some unseen enemy.

The land became less and less wild as he progressed. It was not in the lushness of the greenery, which never faltered, but in the way the vegetation lining the roads no longer obscured its edges. Though still growing riotously, the grasses and bushes scrupulously kept clear of the paved road. Trees much too young to have been planted by the Elves that once lived here were lining the road at neat and almost geometric intervals. A day’s trek into Eregion, and it was almost like Boromir had travelled thousands of years back in time. The road might have been abandoned for a few years, but no more.

Lunch consisted of a hunk of soggy bread, gnawed upon whilst walking, and a break to sit down and cook an unlucky rabbit who was not quite wary enough of two legged predators. Some time in the afternoon, Boromir came across what might have been an outpost or a small village.

He barely breathed as he ventured inside the spun silver fences that enclosed the handful of buildings. The gates had been torn off their hinges, but the buildings themselves had not suffered much damage. The scattering of notched Elven swords on the ground told an eloquent story.

The doors of the buildings were not locked. They were also beset with dazzling rubies in the shapes of various eight rayed stars. Symbols of the house of Feanor. Boromir remembered his history lessons well enough to identify them as the variant that Celebrimbor had once used. Eregion fell while flying banners with this crest. Boromir touched the emblem of his own house stitched to the breast of his jerkin.

The hinges moved without so much as a creak. Besides an accumulation of dust near the doors and windows, nothing had touched the buildings. Lights streamed in through cleverly faceted windows, small enough to be defensible but somehow amplifying the light that they let in so that the rooms were bright and airy nevertheless. The buildings turned out to be barracks and storerooms, and some very peculiar forges and workshops. It was plain that this was an outpost, but it seemed that the soldiers must have spent more time in the forge than they did drilling or patrolling.

Boromir ran a trembling hand over a tray of silver rings with empty settings, clearly abandoned before the maker had time to attach any gems. Eregion was where the Rings of power had been forged, and it seemed like ringcraft was not an art limited to lords and princes. Boromir doubted there was any power in these rings, plain and unfinished as they were, but he lingered over them wistfully nevertheless. He did not feel, in his heart of hearts, that the ancient things here were more than everyday objects preserved in amber. There was a magic sighing and fading over these lands, but the magic was not from trinkets or dulled blades that had been abandoned here to the ages.

He pocketed a handful of arrows from the storerooms, and carefully did not touch the wine and food barrels. There was little hope anything would be edible, and he would not eat anything Elvish even if it was good, not while there was game and wild fruits to be found.

There were some papers in an inner room of the barracks, and Boromir eagerly looked through a thin stack of maps. To his great disappointment, no map had any indication of a possible location for Rivendell. Faramir had gleaned from the libraries of Minas Tirith that Rivendell had been founded after the fall of Eregion, but Boromir had hoped to prove that assumption wrong. The collection of maps did provide him with a pinpoint on his location, and he used it to chart a course through Eregion.

It was known that Rivendell was somewhere near the eastern side of the Misty Mountains, and south of the ruins of Angmar and the Ettenmoors. Faramir had posited that it was somewhere along either the Hoarwell or the Loudwater, but that still spanned half of Rhudaur for Boromir to search through. And what would he do, without a horse? These maps were less than useless in locating any lingering settlements of Men where he might hope to resupply. He would have to cut a line through Eregion, leaving the road that ran alongside the Bruinen and taking an old road north east to the capital, which was itself near enough to the foot of the mountain, then turn and follow a border road north along contour of the Misty Mountains, tracing the eastern border of the old Northern Kingdom until he either perished in the wild or found Imladris at last.

He folded one of the maps and put it into his pack, feeling like a sneakthief. Then he turned and set off along the pale winding road, dread rising in his stomach.

* * *

It was easy enough to follow the roads. They were better maintained than most of the great roads of Gondor. Boromir found that the deeper he ventured into the dead kingdom, the faster he seemed to travel. There was a strange ease to following the well paved roads. Things receded further and further in time, and he was soon travelling through a pristine land that seemed to have only be abandoned for a moment - if not for the ever present track marks upon the roads, and the increasingly damaged settlements that he came across. Small outposts with doors torn down and windows broken. Larger villages of elegant stone buildings full of holes. The destruction seemed newer than the ruins of Osgiliath, though that certainly could not be true. It was as if the battle had been fought yesterday.

Boromir came after some days to the outskirts of the capital of Ost-In-Edhil, sooty and ruined and untouched by time. There must have been great towering buildings once, but almost all the spires had been reduced to rubble. The walls of the city had been knocked full of holes, and in some places it seemed that the stone had been melted down. Had it not been for the lack of actual combatants, Boromir would have thought it was an active battlefield. Swallowing down his dread, he skirted the edges of the city, unwilling to venture inside.

There were no bodies here, Elven or otherwise. It had been clear to him that someone had come through after it was all over and gathered all the bodies - there were broken arrows and some discarded weapons left at the sites of battle, and the occasional helmet, but he had not seen a single breastplate or mail shirt. It was not a comforting thought, to know that whatever survivors of the terrible siege had to venture back after the fact and clear away the bodies.

Osgiliath had already been in ruins, when Boromir and Faramir had defended it. Boromir had succeeded in holding back the enemy, he supposed, but the city had been all but destroyed in the onslaught, and then abandoned. He had never ventured back even once, and certainly had not seen to the cleanup. That had been Faramir’s job. Boromir now wondered what it would have been like. Did Elven bodies rot, in the same way as the stinking, bloated corpses of Men?

Circling around to the Northern road, Boromir turned his back on the timeless husk of a city without daring to venture inside. Osgiliath had been weathered even before it had fallen, and Boromir himself had been the one to destroy the great bridge. It was nothing like this place.

The Rings of the Elves had stayed out of the hands of the Enemy, supposedly, and so Celebrimbor must have counted himself victorious. But the ringsmiths were all gone, save for the Enemy, who still remained,

Boromir had begun to suspect, in his years of holding the eastern border, that there was a power stirring in the East, though he could never bring himself to admit it aloud. But that had been the mistake of these Elves, once. Father had told Boromir and Faramir the tale as children. Looking inward only to their ringcraft, the Elves of Eregion had trusted too easily the false words of the Enemy in fair shape, and ignored too easily the rumours of the power rising in the East. That was how they had fallen.

Boromit glanced back at the broken city, and hurried away. Was this to be the fate of Gondor also?

No, it would not. The works of men faded more quickly than the works of the Elves. Should Gondor fall to the enemy, it would crumble easily enough. The first kings knew some ancient craft of Numenor, and perhaps the their monuments would last. It was not difficult to imagine the tower of Orthanc standing a thousand years from now. But the works of the Stewards would quickly turn to dust, and all that his house strove for would be a forgotten memory. In years to come, would races of Middle Men tell ghost stories of Gondor, like they now told tales of the old North Kingdom? It had always been one long slow decline, from the moment that Elros Tar-Minyatur set sail to Elenna. Boromir had never understood that Gondor was dying, until he was standing in the midst of a fallen kingdom.

Perhaps the House of Stewards would fail. And perhaps Gondor would fail like Eregion, like Arnor, like Numenor, like the great Elven Kingdoms of Beleriand under the waves. But the House of Stewards still stood for now, where the line of Kings had faltered, and like Tar-Miriel they would stay and try to turn back the tide until the moment it was upon them. That would have to be enough. Elendil had preserved the faithful; perhaps some cadet line of his house would survive Gondor. Thinking of his mission, Boromir tightened the straps of his pack, and hurried onward.


End file.
